Say Less. Mean More.

Clutter kills clarity. The faster you remove it, the faster people move.

The hardest part of communicating anything isn’t deciding what to say. It’s deciding what not to say.

Clear communication is a discipline. It means resisting the urge to add, even when adding feels helpful. It means stripping the message down to the parts that actually guide action and letting the rest go.

Most messages get bloated because we want to be thorough. We add context. We add rationale. We add history. Before long, the listener is sorting through so much material that the actual point gets lost.

Rick Rubin has a line I keep coming back to: distill the work to its essence. Strip away anything that’s not the core. Less is generally more. He’s talking about music, but the idea applies to any message you want someone to absorb and act on.

I saw this play out on a call recently. A leader was trying to explain a simple issue, but the message got buried under a string of caveats and if/then side roads. By the end, people were unsure what the actual problem was.

This is why I use a simple method I call Headline + 3.

The headline is the main point you want your audience to center on and remember. One line. If it takes more than that, the message isn’t centered yet.

The +3 are the clarifiers.

Not tasks. Not a project plan. Clarifiers.

Clarifiers answer things like:

•       What this does mean

•       What this doesn’t mean

•       Why it matters

•       The one thing to watch for

•       A simple example that locks it in

Pick three.

Three anchors people can carry with them without rereading your email or checking their notes.

Here’s a quick before/after:

Without structure:

“We’re tightening the positioning, though, to be fair, it depends a bit on how product wants to frame the upcoming release cycle. And I know we said we were aligned on the value pillars, but a few of the examples from the field this week suggest we might need to tweak them slightly—nothing major, just small shifts. I’m not saying we need to redo anything; I just think we may need to adjust the story before we call it final.”

Headline + 3:

Headline: We’re tightening our positioning before rollout.

+3:

• Product flagged a few gaps we need to close

• Sales feedback pushed us to sharpen the value story

• We need to settle ownership so the rollout stays clean

Now the message is simple, shareable, and centered on what the audience actually needs to know.

This isn’t dumbing it down. It’s making it usable. People have limited attention, competing priorities, and finite mental capacity. A clean message helps them act. A crowded one slows everything down.

Take a pause.

Give them the headline.

Give them the clarifiers.

Everything else is clutter.